


Posthumans in a friendly human world

by sadfuckboy



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28661280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadfuckboy/pseuds/sadfuckboy
Summary: You can love and be loved by anyone. But they all see themselves in others, you're the only one here who needs a mirror.





	1. dodgeball

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This first chapter is easier, more light on anything meaningful, it was written to provide context and contrast to the second chapter.  
> You can read this one if you like but the second chapter doesn't require it. <3

Elsa fell off a swing. Sky dark as coal above.  
Hit the ground, blood gushing like pourn from a jug, knees inferior to the castle’s brick yard. She swallowed all cries and yelps brewing in her lungs. After collision she immediately jolted back to her ass. Reflexes pulled her hands up to freeze the gush shut, stopping the bloodflow but making the pain unbearable. The voice leaving her was a weird glitching whimper. Incapable of moving an inch in fear of more pain she wheezed face down on the ground. Gripping the stoned ground with her fingers. 

No seconds longer than the ones used to fill lungs empty from shock. It was that feral reaction to intense pain where everything around the pain disappears. Oxygen flow to her brain stopping. It felt like she hadn’t taken in air for weeks, blood in her head thin. Heart still trying to work, desperate pulse smacking the damaged and torn tissue.  
Hour long seconds passed, and breath returned shaking. Her brain ran after the air, spoon in hand trying to scoop it down. She managed to move herself a little to rest her back on the ground. Careful to not straighten her legs. 

Lying down she started to focus her sight. It’s harder when the dark sky barely differed from tthe black plugging her eyes. Little white circles in her vision flickering in and out like stars. Slow readjustment to visualise objects again in the dark. 

What greeted her was a horror show. Ice around had formed into ugly hostile spikes, disfigured and fearful shapes resembling a sea urchin circling. Like a giant monster these masses circled around her. Rising up and down. Trapping her in. Sticking to the castle walls and yard like tumors. Poking up to the sky like trying to burst it. Her heart rose to her throat, clogging it again, pupils widening. She had wrecked the place. 

Dread and apathy were like the tides with her. Her head spinned but her body stayed on the ground. For a few more moments her mind just left her. Static vision making the ice surface look like it moved. 

“Everything okay?” 

She sprung up to a sitting position, frantically searching around her.  
There were saw no one but the ice started to melt slowly. Harsh spikes starting to drip away their hostile edges. Masses forming into puddles that slowly got closer to elsa, who was located at the center. Eye of the hurricane. The cold water started to soak into her clothes. For a moment se was just transfixed by it. Something she could have previously only dreamt of was unfolding so casually.

Taking away anything her powers had created had always been impossible for her. Snow in the halls, drinks frozen solid. All of it stayed. Cleaned the old fashion way. Human way. Though saying that, thinking that, made her uneasy. What was she, if her powers weren’t human?

Water was drentching the whole place, her clothes got more heavy, cold and uncomfortable every second. She got up, blinking and careful of her legs. Sound of water falling down her hips to the little pond in her feet filled the stale air. No wind, no words, only the dribble and pop of drops.

She splashed the water lightly with the tips of her shoes. As if check it was real. And cleared her throat. Her lifted posture and assertive tone were nothing but performance of clarity and power a teen like herself could only dream of actually possessing.

“Whoever did this, please show yourself!”

Not from her side, nor her back or her front, but from the sky, she heard an overly casual tone.  
“Sorry! Did you want to keep that installation?” 

Little to her right, on one of the castle barriers, stood a blond haired teenager around her age. In the dark she couldn’t make up much, but the voice seemed masculine, even if the main tone was just snark. 

“No, of course.” Her words came out slow when she wasn’t in control of a situation. Careful with every word. “Who are you?” She tried to make out his face, barely catching the glister of his teeth, exposed by a smile. Her body was tense.

“A friend?” The boy came more into her field of vision. White skin, white hair, white specks on his hoodie resembling a blister. Elsa quickly rose her hand to point, snowflakes circling it. There was no friendship in that.  
“Um” He was clearly thinking. “A friendly visitor?” He tiptoed in the air.  
Suddenly, the creature moved towards Elsa, causing her to raise both her hands in a frantic motion, shooting ice straight towards his face. 

“Whoah!”  
The air rang with the shot, the boy jolted back, but reached forward and stopped the ice mid air. 

“Whoo… christ.” The ice slithered to a ball between his fingers and turned into snow. Which then slowly started to fall down to the ground. He watched it go.

“Huhh?” Unglamorous babble left Elsa’s lips like her brain had crashed. She never thought she’d see something like that. It had only existed in her mind as hope meant to be crushed the moment it surfaced. A hope that rarely dared to show it’s lying face to her, a girl who had to hide and fear and live in separation both mentally and physically.

The blond boy left out a whistle ending in a chuckle “Are we done making noises?” 

Elsa looked away in embarrassment, gaze dipping to the ankle deep pool around her. “You are annoying.”

“You really managed to capture my essence there. But who are you?” The man bought himself down to the ground but kept the distance between them same. learning from his previous mistake. Circles born from him rode the water surface, towards Elsa.

“You do all this and now you want me to introduce myself?” She felt that she sounded a bit immature, but compared to her current companion, this wasn’t anything.

He just shrugged. Infuriating!

She decided to give up. “I’m Elsa.” Leaving her titles out was unlike her. She did it out of distrust, she told herself. But inside her hid a longing for and illusion of casual existance with this Jack, or more so with anyone who stopped her from being the only one. 

“Jack.” He pointed at himself as if it wasn’t obvious. 

“Why are you here?” 

“I mean, it is going to snow tomorrow in this area. Thought I’d check it first.” Words came out of him with too much relaxation. Like he wasn’t afraid of anything, like nothing could hurt him.  
One side of Elsa found that incredibly threatening, enemy like that would be devastating. Other part of her was disarmed by his chummy delivery.  
Her life of always both arching for connection and training to bar everything had burn her brain to a crisp. Making her almost paralised in a situation like this. 

“What does that even mean? What do any of those things have to do with anything?” It was all too much. The pain the confusion the tragedy on during a moment she had waited for so long.

“Oh, I make the snow. It’s my thing. Thought you would know.” His hands gestured towards her whole frame, her deal.

“I’ve never.. ” She moved a little, small waves now pulsating from her. “.. I’ve never known anyone.... I didn’t think… ” Her hand just uselessly pointed to him. Rings in the water reaching Jack.

“Oh,” Elsa noticed a complete change in his voice. He sounded sad. 

“That sucks. wow. No one?” Elsa looked towards him. He seemed lost somehow. Quickly glancing around the courtyard and then back to her.

“Are you cold?”

Out of reflex she was forming her mouth to a “No.” It was one part of her inhuman nature. She could never loath winter, because she never felt the cold like the others did. But now she realised that she actually trembled. Adrenaline had drowned down all her pain. She was extremely cold. It dawned on her that it must be all the water, an element that didn’t belong to her.  
“Yes.” She took a moment, a moment so short no thought even occurred during it, and started to move.  
“I need to go inside. I’m going inside. Goodbye.” Her voice came out whimpering and that rose another emotion from her stomack. She’d made a complete full out of herself, in front of a… What, why did it matter what this boy thought of her? 

“Oh, okay. i guess then” Jack was unreadable. Not in a way that’s empty, but in a way that you couldn’t know if he was concerned or sliding in a prank.

Turning her back on a stranger felt wrong. But Elsa was so cold, so tired. Getting away was now all she thought of. But walking in water, wet drapes pulling her down, was like she was in a dream, a nightmare. Each step was wide and took forever. Her body hunched like she was a grandmother in a snowstorm.

Five steps in and all the water suddenly turned to snow. She looked around her, bewildered, and found jack walking beside her, or more so floating. Wind blew, tickling her ankles as it brushed snow away from her. Making a walkable path.

“Oh.” She stopped her walk. 

All of this was .. all of this..

She lifted her right arm. Single snowflake started to dance on it. For some reason she just needed to see that right now. Her own powers. Whenever she created snow, she didn’t really concentrate to make it, more so the cold just listened her. She must have looked so dumb just staring at that one dancing snowflake, but she needed it. And somehow this boy, Jack, was just quiet. 

After what must have been a long respecting silence to Jack, but barely seconds to Elsa. He started to talk with a way more care than before. “How long have you had your powers?”

Elsa peeked at him, but decided she was too tired to hide herself. “Since birth.”

“Oh.” She felt him look away from her. “Rough. At least mine were forced upon me. Helps me separate them from myself if needed.”

“You can turn them off?” Elsa’s voice rose. Part of her was constantly ready to hope.

Jack must have seen that in her. His tone changed. Low like he was apologising to her. “No.. I meant like, mentally.”

“Oh.” Even if she didn’t meant to, a weight fell in her stomach. Disappointment.  
She started to walk again. Wind brushed her shoulders, reacting with the water. The type of cold that felt like knife wounds. She hadn’t felt that in so long. Funny, she didn’t enjoy having it now.

“Do your knees hurt?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” She was biting her teeth due to the pain.

She felt his eyes on her back and tried her best not to limp too much.

Edge of the snow reached her faster than she thought. She stomped the snow from the tips of her boots. A strong learned habit. It was immediately regrettedable. Shockwaves from the action dug straight to her scars. Frustrated wail hummed in her throat but she forced it silent.

“You going up there?” Jack pointed to a balcony on the third floor. Elsas personal room. How could he know that was hers?

“No.” 

“I just thought you’d live in the coldest one.” Was he able to sense temperature? What a freak of nature. She immediately realised how disturbing that thought was. More internalised hate than anything.

“Do you mean to be this rude?” She honestly couldn’t tell if anything he said was calculated. He just talked like most customs didn’t exist to him.

He laughed a little. “I don’t know.”  
For a person to have such talent. To always choose the most infuriating words without halt. But she had to recognize that he at least tried to be gentle.

Elsa made it to the stairs on the castle back door. Carefully shifting her body to move up on them without stretching her torns.  
Both hands on the handle, she pulled with her whole body, and was finally able to slip inside. As much as the big castle was calling to her, as much as her bed sang to her, she still turned by the door to look at Jack outside.

Silence fell. She had no words, she didn’t know what all of this even was. All her years wishing for someone entirely new yet finally just like her, now that he was in front of her, it felt like this wasn’t it at all.

Yet she couldn’t say goodbye. On that moment she felt she never could. 

The man, boy, in front of her just stared. Arendellians were brought up believing in fairytales, in faith. And the two of them right now right here were that, meant to meet, but yet they were but teenagers.

She made their eyes meet. Lingering on that and then shrugged, just to do something. Just to even move, to acknowledge this was. That this existed.

Jack stared a bit more. As if gears turning. He then said: “I’ll come visit you again.” 

He let the wind take him away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my art blog is sohjoa.tumblr.com <3


	2. The present

To think that there was a nice reason like that.  
Elsa had always thought he walked bare foot because of his death. The ice cold water digging the hypothermia into his bones, flesh. Raw skin on cold ice reminding him of last moments spent with a body blind to surrounding temperature. But it was something so casual, simple. Sweet even. 

When her heels treaded the small pile of icy sludge it grinded against the frozen floor making a horrid sound. The crackle quietly drumming around the palace vestibule. But every time the wind blew Jack into her home, he never made a sound. She’d look away and he’d appear from her dead angle. Making her earrings tingle like a windbell when she gasped in surprise. He was quiet as empty space because he had no hard edges to trample the pavement. With his body free of warmth, cold to the touch and unbreakable, not even footprints were left on the snow. Not that he touched the ground that often. No need for a cat, he dragged himself in. 

He’d slipped in on the middle of her insomnia induced walk around the castle. Once again making her flinch to a point of crooking fingers. Him wearing that weird emotion of intrigue little boys had when they provoked an emotion from their close ones. Start of a conversation with a smugly delivered “Love the twin braid.” from what to her seemed like empty space, quiet air around her. 

But she was always so collected. Some people accelerate to insanity after their chains crumble. But to her the years of suffocation had something very.. her in them. Something she carried to better times. She sighed to lett her form fall relaxed. “Jack, with these materialisation antics you’ll make me believe I’m never truly alone.” 

He grinned ear to ear. “Isn’t that good?”

She couldn’t help but soften at that. It’s cute. Cute how it all could just be about perception. “Older people value their privacy Jack.” Glancing out the window. Tranquility of the night holding her in it’s embrace.

Jack smiled, Elsa knew he understood. 

“I’m older than you!”  
Smile. Peeking to her side at the teenage boy who had joined the window. The framed view of a heavy drop down to the wast mountains and the small cocoon of Arendelle resting in the middle. She never got tired of the empty way Jack looked at it. Something that meant her the whole world, that tore her soul to shreds with stress and worry, to him was just a city like any other. 

Filled to the brim with people Elsa loved but whom she felt no kinship to. For a long time she found that in Jack. But now everything was once again distressing.  
It’s scary. How after for so long craving, longing for someone like him, twinlike to her, it was once again slipping away from her grasp. Jack was old, but he was so young at the same time. As she changed, he remained stationary. She was going up the escalator and he was sitting on the stairs next to them. The casual small glance towards her was like an embodiment of what their connection felt like in his wast lifespan.

“How are you doing Jack?” At least she still knew how to read him. She was stoick, time had brought her more visible warmth but it had also made her posture and way of carrying herself finally honest and naturally unshaken. But he was still a teenage boy, only thing time had brought him was un-apologeticness. All his emotions spiked up with force and he hid none of them. Now he seemed uncharacterly down.

Jack hufs. Breath icing on the glass surface.“I know it’s always winter somewhere, but I get real low when summer hits my old hometown.” Picking the ice. “It’s not like I know anyone from there anymore. It’s like a metropoly area now. But with the snow disappearing there’s like, nothing, anymore.” 

Like so many times before, Elsa couldn’t answer. Over the years they’d gone through this and she’d tried to bond, to softly understand and empathise. But she could never understand. This was not the alienation and fear concerning their powers, this was life experience they could never share to the same extent. She’d known terrible loss. She was always dead afraid of loss. But with age it became clear why Jack never managed to take her tries with comforting seriously. Fearing loss was a privilege when you were at the company of someone who knew nothing but loss. 

Sometimes there was no cure, no words. She reached her arm to her side as to guide, and Jack slipped in to be held by her. 

He weighted nothing. She had never learned if that was just an aspect of his body, or if he lifted himself up. Taking the weight of himself away from her, even when she comforted him. She had asked, but knew that Jack was never completely able to stop lying.

In between fingers she twirled the frost covered tips on his hair. He ran a finger across the golden decorations slithering down the edges of her cape.

“How are you doing elsa? Was Anna’s birthday fun?” He had found a liking in a skinny silver deer that rested between all the hefty bears and eagles. Being a queen drips into everything you are, it rips away your personhood bit by bit. Symbol of the people stops being a human only, she is all the things needed of her. Power must never leave her presence, so she even sleeps with predators.

“Yes, she was overwhelmed of being 30. Screamed and couldn’t stop talking about it.” She hummed lovingly but then stopped. “Weirdly.. hm. Sometimes I feel that I experience my own emotions with her as she grows. I never really realised it when I became this old. Until I saw it in her.” She trailed off with those last words.

“You two really are a pair.” Jack reached his hand towards the window sill. Elsa took the mark and moved them to sit on it. She had gone quiet again. Pondering.

“Anna is a summer child. hm. I never really thought about that. It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it. Opposites.” Last word came out like a jingle. Jack has a habit of filling silence. Elsa had first had a problem adjusting to it, she was quiet a lot. But it was important to be delicate to him. It wasn’t the uncomfortable social situation he feared, but the emptiness in one its many forms. It’s interesting to her, his clinging to life. Is it really human nature, to never have enough?

“How are you Elsa?” She didn’t know weather he just wanted to talk, or if he was worried.

Elsa let out a sigh.“I get anxious. With the summer. I don’t know why. maybe I’m connected to the ice. It shrinks and I’m not sure if it has a soul or if I just want it to have, but I feel suffocated.” 

“I like to think that we are. Connected to it. Like I wish I knew this for sure like some omnipotent being, but I don’t. I just like it, feeling that the ice is here with me.” He became quiet. Must have seen Elsa still had more.

She had stared at him when he talked, finding comfort in his ideas, that no one else in her life had ever even thought about. “It’s also the days. They are so bright and without end. Feels like I never get peace from everyone’s eyes.” The world felt so large when it was lit. She couldn’t look up at the sky because it made her feel like she could fall to her death in it. Darkness soothed her. Every space became small enough to hold her.

“You’re a loner Elsa.” For a moment Jack looked like he actually regretted something he said. Elsa tensed, but fell back. It’s not like she disagreed. It had been in her mind a lot. Older age removed the gold from her father’s memory and she had started to think about her past a lot. “Did you know babies born during the winter are scared of big crowds? Because they got so used to being inside.”

Jack shook his head, but gave her a look of understanding.

“I hope we aren’t just our past.”

Elsa hummed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i posted this, quite indifferent and tired. but i do know i care and love what i wrote here. even if rn im sleepy and this is posted without proofreading and a bit unfinished on many parts. I'm always open for all types of discussion and talking. 
> 
> my artblog is sohjoa.tumblr.com


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